On September 9th and 10th, the Knight Institute and Columbia’s Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism will convene journalists, scholars, lawyers, and activists to explore one of those legacies in particular: The ongoing impact of the War on Terror on democratic rights, including the freedoms of speech and the press.

First Amendment freedoms came under stress from the moment President George W. Bush declared a “War on Terror” and his press secretary warned Americans to “watch what they say.” Pervasive secrecy and censorship hid war crimes, torture, and other grave human rights abuses. Surveillance programs proliferated, from the NYPD’s targeting of New York Muslim communities to digital surveillance operations of unprecedented scope and reach. Anti-terrorism legislation criminalized forms of peaceful speech and association. The press struggled to fulfill its role, and when journalists did report on controversial and covert programs, they did so in the shadow of the Espionage Act, which the government deployed against journalists’ sources and threatened to deploy against journalists themselves. 

But those same First Amendment freedoms nurtured new forms of resistance, solidarity, and even accountability as well. Civil society groups and community organizations mobilized to defend civil liberties and protect targeted minorities. A new generation of journalists responded to the failures of legacy media by building new media tools and institutions in response to the failures, limitations, and blind spots of legacy media.

What does all of this mean for us today? To what extent are we still living the Forever War, and in what ways are we now living in its shadow? How have the suppressions and distortions of the Forever War worked their way into our systems and psyches? Is our system of free expression stronger or weaker now? This symposium will explore these and other questions and assess the lasting significance of the Forever War for First Amendment freedoms and for our democratic institutions and culture. 

The symposium is co-sponsored by the Knight Institute and the Simon and June Li Center for Global Journalism at Columbia Journalism School in partnership with Harper’s Magazine and The Columbia Daily Spectator. 

Reception to follow on September 9.

Lunch will be provided on September 10.

Registration is required.

RSVP for in-person or virtual attendance.

As part of our efforts to combat the Trump administration’s weaponization of its ICC sanctions regime to suppress disfavored speech, the Knight Institute recently helped secure a meaningful victory for Josh Paul, a foreign policy expert and former State Department official. Mr. Paul had been asked to testify as an expert witness in a lawsuit in Canada challenging the Canadian government’s role in exporting military components and technology to Israel during the war in Gaza. But because one of the plaintiffs in the case is the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq, which has been sanctioned by the U.S. government, Mr. Paul was aware that offering his expert opinions in the case could expose him to severe criminal and civil penalties. In response to a letter sent by the Knight Institute and cooperating attorney Joseph Pace, the Treasury Department issued what is known as a “license” to Mr. Paul, allowing him to go forward with his participation in the lawsuit, albeit for a limited time and subject to certain conditions. 

Treasury’s license is an important but incomplete victory. Most directly, it enables Mr. Paul to engage in constitutionally protected speech by offering his expert views in the lawsuit. And the license serves as tacit acknowledgement that the U.S. government likely has limited interests in policing such activity. These are notable concessions. The license, however, falls short of what we had requested—public guidance making clear that serving as an independent expert witness at the request of counsel representing a designated entity does not violate U.S. sanctions law, and that no authorization is required before Mr. Paul and others engage in this kind of activity. Treasury’s decision to issue a limited license, instead of guidance disclaiming its authority to regulate this kind of speech, suggests that Treasury believes it has the power to restrict or permit, at its sole discretion, expert testimony in these circumstances. Treasury’s position effectively institutes a prior restraint on speech, implicitly requiring any person who wishes to engage in it to first ask the government for permission.

The license comes in the context of the Trump administration’s sustained campaign to “systematically disable” the ICC and those who assist its efforts to investigate and prosecute U.S. or Israeli citizens for alleged human rights violations. In February 2025, President Trump issued an executive order that imposes sanctions on foreign persons whom the Secretary of State determines “to have directly engaged in any effort by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute” citizens of the United States or certain U.S. allies, including Israel. The executive order expressly prohibits Americans from providing “services by, to, or for the benefit of any [designated] person,” while making no attempt to define or limit the term “services” or explain what it means for a service to be “by, to, or for the benefit of” a designated entity. These broad and vague prohibitions are backed by serious civil and even criminal penalties.

The U.S. government has subsequently relied on the executive order to sanction numerous groups and individuals. It designated several ICC judges and prosecutors, citing their attempts to investigate and prosecute U.S. and Israeli citizens. It designated Francesca Albanese, an international human rights expert who serves as the U.N. “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967” because she had “directly engaged” with the ICC, including by recommending that the ICC issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. And it designated Al-Haq and two other prominent Palestinian human rights groups for purportedly aiding the ICC in its efforts to “investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals.” The sanctions against Al-Haq and others have had significant consequences for the targets of those designations, cutting them off from critical funding, resources, and infrastructure that originate from U.S. sources. But they have also had a profound impact on the many Americans who wish to engage with those who have been sanctioned—through constitutionally protected speech and association—but who are fearful that doing so could expose them to liability for violating U.S. sanctions law. Indeed, over the past year, the Knight Institute has heard from numerous scholars, journalists, and human rights advocates who have been chilled from exercising their First Amendment rights because they fear that speaking to, hearing from, and collaborating with sanctioned entities could result in serious civil and criminal liability.

Treasury’s license is significant because it permits Mr. Paul to proceed with his plans to assist the Canadian courts with adjudicating a major constitutional case without the fear that he will run afoul of U.S. sanctions law, but more durable protections are necessary to address the significant chilling effect caused by the executive order and the ICC sanctions regime. That is why the Knight Institute has sought to cabin the Treasury Department’s authority to apply its sanctions restrictions expansively to restrict protected speech and association. Scholars, journalists, and human rights advocates should be free to continue their vital work without the looming threat of sanctions enforcement hanging over their heads.

But just as important as the question of what is the question of how.

It is notoriously difficult to get Congress to pass reform on any prominent issue, and the last major press freedom legislation that was signed into law was the SPEECH Act more than 17 years ago, at a time when it was fairly uncontroversial.

In order to get any press freedom legislation passed—especially in an environment where trust in the media is at an all-time low—the press freedom community needs a much more comprehensive and aggressive lobbying strategy that goes well beyond the usual advocacy many organizations are used to.

At Freedom of the Press Foundation, we learned a lot of lessons from the almost-successful push to get the PRESS Act passed in 2024, where we poured almost all of our advocacy efforts into lobbying for that one bill, and I’d like to share them here.

Our biggest takeaway is, as a group, press freedom organizations must do a lot more than sign coalition letters, write an initial endorsement or blog post, and talk to a few friendly staffers.

We need to start a relentless, multipronged effort from the very beginning of the congressional session that does not let up for a moment. This includes:

• Finding co-sponsors on the relevant committees ourselves (via outreach, local op-eds, and local leaders who have personal connections). Bill authors or initial sponsors may not have the motivation, the time, or (believe it or not) the relationships to do this themselves, so it’s up to advocacy groups to do the legwork to find and convince key offices to become sponsors and then make sure their offices follow through to make it official. Local press associations and other state-based organizations are often key to making these pitches.
• Pushing committee chairs to get the bills out of committee quickly. It doesn’t matter if a lot of members support our bill—if it doesn’t get out of committee, then the full chambers won’t vote on it. Targeting relevant committee members as soon as Congress is in session, plus putting a special emphasis on ranking members to make sure a vote happens ASAP, is imperative. The Senate will have to deal with a lot of last-minute nominations and budget issues at the end of each congressional session, so every day our bills sit is a day that is lost.
• Engaging with members of the opposite party (sometimes through intermediaries they will listen to). Here, I’ll use Republicans as an example. We will have to regularly generate talking points that will specifically appeal to their base and the right-wing media they support, work with right-leaning groups to get meetings we can’t, publish op-eds in right-wing media, and pitch conservative radio stations, podcasts, and television shows to talk about the issue. They rely on press freedom too, even if they hate mainstream media, and our talking points must emphasize that.
• Hiring more lobbyists. 501(c)(3)s are often nervous about directly hiring lobbyists because of lobbying limits in the 501(c)(3) rules and potential funder restrictions. But there is not a total ban on lobbying; as long as you disclose it, you’re permitted to spend a modest percentage of your budget on it. It’s also important to emphasize that lobbying on specific issues relevant to your mission is different from “electioneering,” which is banned. (Please consult your lawyer about the specific rules.) We had a lot of success hiring and working with Republican lobbyists aligned with us on the PRESS Act issue. It’s also important to hire not just a general lobbyist, but one with specific contacts in the offices we are most concerned about. Even if they can’t move votes, they can often gather valuable intel that we would not otherwise have access to.
• Doing a comprehensive whip count. Keeping track of the positions of all 535 members of Congress is a chaotic job but also can make all the difference. A comprehensive whip count is also not just marking each representative as Yes/No/Unknown. It’s a list of key staffers, who is engaging and who is not, on what date the member is known to have last weighed in, and a whole host of other information that would be hard for one group to track themselves but is a perfect project for a coalition.
• Doing extra legwork for the staffers themselves. This includes seeking out intel and trading it with staffers; making introductions across offices (believe it or not, they often don’t know each other!); offering to write talking points, hearing questions, letters to relevant federal agencies, or op-eds for the Congressmembers; and much more.
• Finding any avenue to engage the Congressmember themselves. Often we are only talking to staffers, who will always do a majority of the work, but it’s likely the member is unaware of much of the legwork their staffers are doing until the last minute. If we don’t have direct connections with the members themselves, we need to find people (whether it be donors, lobbyists, friends, or others) who do. That means acting like journalists ourselves: cold emailing or calling, knocking on doors, finding leads, and not giving up when we hit dead ends.
• Engaging with reporters to ask on-the-record questions. Reporters likely aren’t going to sign letters or do advocacy themselves, but working with them, especially in the halls of Congress, to ask questions at press gaggles about the legislation as regularly as possible is the best way to get a lawmaker on the record. We should have a relationship with every single reporter who regularly covers Congress!
• Engaging news outlets’ owners and CEOs directly to get them personally involved as soon as possible. They need to do more than sign on to coalition letters too, and they can help with all of the above: they likely have direct connections with members themselves, they can hire lobbyists themselves (some even have under-the-radar lobbying budgets!), they have influence over their editorial boards, and much more. Of course, many won’t engage, but some will. All we need is a few of the big ones to do work behind the scenes.
• Ghost-writing op-eds. We might not always be the best messengers for our own message. It may be someone with a much higher public profile, or someone who is more sympathetic to a lawmaker or segment of the public we are targeting. We have to not only find the individuals to put their names behind our idea but also be OK with the fact that we will never get “credit” for the work.

Of course, I don’t want to imply we invented any of these tactics; many organizations already do at least some of these things on one issue or another, and others have had more lobbying success than us. It’s also true that a lot of these items involve calling in favors or using finite amounts of political capital. It means that we won’t be able to use all of these tactics for every single bill we want passed. But for at least one, or maybe a few, it can work if we commit as a group to work together on it and leave no stone unturned.

Let’s start with the PRESS Act.

Described by The New York Times as a “social conscience, multimedia collaborator, system builder, rhapsodist, historical thinker and multicultural gateway,” Iyer has carved out a unique path as an influential, prolific, shape-shifting presence in 21st-century music. A composer and pianist active and revered across multiple musical communities, Iyer has created a consistently innovative, emotionally resonant body of work over the last three decades, earning him a place as one of the leading music-makers of his generation.

Discussing his participation in this symposium, Iyer explained:

I have lived in New York City since 1998 and was home that morning in September 2001. Our immediate overwhelming sorrow and confusion soon was overlaid with pervasive anxiety, as every brown person became subject to new levels of surveillance and suspicion. “Welcome to racial profiling,” the writer Greg Tate told me that fall, highlighting our linked fates. At the time I was playing piano in poet Amiri Baraka’s band. Shortly after the attacks his iconic piece Somebody Blew Up America became a mainstay in our repertoire. 

Since then, every choice I’ve made as an artist has been structured by the U.S.’s post-9/11 descent into overt fascism, from my collaborative projects with poet Mike Ladd (In What Language? (2003), Still Life with Commentator (2007), and Holding it Down: The Veterans’ Dreams Project (2013)), to instrumental albums like Blood Sutra (2003), Tragicomic (2008), and Uneasy (2021), to a recent protest album with Wadada Leo Smith titled Defiant Life (2025). In this performance I will share selections from these and other projects as an activation of our present moment.

Iyer’s many honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, a Doris Duke Artist Award, a United States Artist Fellowship, the Alpert Award in the Arts, and three Grammy nominations. He is the Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Music and the Department of African and African American Studies.

The symposium will run from 4:00 pm ET on September 9th through 5:00 pm ET on September 10th and will feature panels and public interviews with scholars, lawyers, journalists, and advocates including M. Gessen, Lydia Polgreen, Phil Klay, Steve Coll, Rozina Ali, David Cole, Jelani Cobb, Aziz Rana, and many others, along with one-on-one conversations with Alberto Mora, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, and Mohsen Mahdawi. Iyer’s performance will take place on the opening evening–September 9th. 

Please register here to attend in person or to watch the livestream. Iyer’s performance will not be livestreamed.

“The Trump administration has used its immigration authority in shocking and unprecedented ways to target Mr. Khalil and other pro-Palestinian advocates based solely on their constitutionally protected speech, and it has done so precisely to terrify others into silence and stifle dissent,” said Xiangnong (George) Wang, staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “The court should reverse the BIA’s decision and put an end to Mr. Khalil’s removal proceedings.”  

Khalil appealed his immigration case to the Fifth Circuit earlier this month, asking the court to reverse the BIA’s decision finding him removable and to terminate the proceedings entirely. Khalil argued that the BIA lacked the authority to sustain the key ground of his removal, that the grounds for his removal are unconstitutional, and that the immigration judge rushed to a decision without considering relevant evidence, refused to consider the constitutional challenges to his deportation, and improperly sustained pretextual, after-the-fact charges that the Trump administration brought in retaliation for his speech. 

In addition to arguing that the government targeted and retaliated against Khalil on the basis of his constitutionally protected political speech, the Knight Institute’s brief agrees with Khalil that the government’s conduct in this case was “outrageous” because Khalil’s advocacy implicates constitutional interests of the highest order, because the government’s targeting of Khalil and others based on their protected speech is particularly egregious, and because Khalil has an undeniable interest is avoiding targeted deportation that outweighs any interest the government may have in removing noncitizens due to disagreement with their views.

The Knight Institute challenged the Trump administration’s deportation policy in March 2025 on behalf of the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association. After a nine-day trial, the district court issued a landmark ruling invalidating the Trump administration’s policy of targeting noncitizen students and faculty for arrest, detention, visa revocation, and deportation because of their pro-Palestinian advocacy. The court held that the policy violated the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act and vacated the policy but declined to issue the injunction sought by the plaintiffs. The Knight Institute has asked the First Circuit Court of Appeals to permanently block the policy in order to end its continuing chilling effect on campuses nationwide. Read more about AAUP v. Rubio here.

The Knight Institute also previously filed an amicus brief in Khalil v. Trump, Khalil’s separate challenge to his unlawful arrest and detention, urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to find that the government’s detention and attempted deportation of Khalil on the basis of his protected speech is unconstitutional. Read more about that case here. 

Read the Knight Institute’s Fifth Circuit amicus brief here.

Read more about this lawsuit, Khalil v. Blanche, here.

Lawyers on the case include Alex Abdo, Xiangnong (George) Wang, Raya Koreh, and Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute.

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, lorraine.kenny@knightcolumbia.org. 

The amicus brief makes two points in urging the Fifth Circuit to reverse the BIA’s decision. First, the brief explains that the trial record and district court decision in AAUP v. Rubio demonstrate that Mr. Khalil was targeted based on his core political speech as part of a government policy of arresting, detaining, revoking the visas of, and deporting noncitizens who engage in pro-Palestinian advocacy. Second, the brief explains that Khalil's First Amendment challenge to his attempted deportation may go forward because, even if his claim would otherwise be barred, it falls with the exception the Supreme Court has carved out for "outrageous" government conduct.

Status: Briefing on appeal ongoing.

Case Information: Khalil v. Blanche, No. 26-60344 (5th Cir.)

“We’re disappointed in the court’s decision. Public servants should not have to jump through futile administrative hoops to exercise their freedom of speech, said Alex Abdo, litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “When the government places a prior restraint on the expression of public employees, they should be able to go to court to challenge that restraint immediately, without delay. With immigration policy at the center of national debate, it’s more important than ever that the public hear what immigration judges have to say.”

In 2020, the Knight Institute filed this lawsuit on behalf of NAIJ, challenging an Executive Office for Immigration Review policy that prohibits immigration judges from speaking publicly in their personal capacities about immigration or the agency that employs them. A district court dismissed the case in 2023, holding that the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 requires such claims to proceed through administrative review.

In June 2025, the Fourth Circuit revived the case, expressing concern that recent actions by the Trump administration may have undermined the agencies charged with hearing federal employment claims—the Office of Special Counsel and Merit Systems Protection Board—and that they may no longer be operating as Congress intended. But the court also held that, if that system is functioning as Congress intended, immigration judges would be required to challenge the policy through that administrative process rather than in federal court.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court granted the government’s request to reverse the appeals court decision, and it also denied NAIJ’s cross-petition for certiorari, which had argued that federal employees should be permitted to challenge broad prior restraints on their speech in federal court without first having to go through cumbersome and potentially futile administrative proceedings. The Supreme Court sent the case back to the Fourth Circuit to address any remaining issues in the case, resulting in today’s decision. 

“NAIJ is disappointed by today’s decision. The court did not reach the merits of NAIJ’s free speech claims, and the case was dismissed without prejudice. NAIJ remains committed to protecting judicial independence and will carefully consider its next steps,” said Holly A. D’Andrea, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges. 

NAIJ is a nonpartisan, nonprofit voluntary association of federal immigration judges. Its members have long participated in public conversations and events about immigration law, including through teaching, training, and community engagement.

Read today’s decision here.

Read more about the lawsuit, Margolin v. National Association of Immigration Judges, here.

Lawyers on the case include Ramya Krishnan, Alex Abdo, Xiangnong (George) Wang, and Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute.

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, lorraine.kenny@knightcolumbia.org. 

On January 30, 2026, the government arrested independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort in connection with their reporting during a January 18, 2026, protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Lemon and Fort were charged with violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinical Entrances (“FACE”) Act, 18 U.S.C. § 248, and for conspiracy against rights criminalized by statute, 18 U.S.C. § 241.

The Knight Institute’s amicus brief argues that the FACE Act and Section 241 cannot be applied to Lemon’s and Fort’s newsgathering conduct for two reasons. First, they lacked the specific intent required by the statutes because they were at the protests with the intent to cover a news story, not to deprive anyone of the “right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.” Second, if the statutes were interpreted to extend to journalistic activity, the statutes would be unconstitutionally vague and overbroad because they could be construed to apply to reporting in public spaces.

Status: Briefing on motion to dismiss ongoing.

Case information: United States v. Levy Armstrong, No. 0:26-cr-00025 (D. Minn.).

The case arose from a May 2022 mass shooting at a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York. Survivors and victims’ family members brought products liability and other claims against major social media platforms, alleging that the platforms radicalized the teenage gunman by recommending racist and violent content. The Fourth Department held that Section 230 barred the claims.

The Institute’s amicus brief in this case, like its amicus brief in Gonzalez v. Google, argues that categorically excluding recommendation algorithms from Section 230 immunity would have devastating consequences for free speech online. The brief further argues that Section 230 is best read to immunize platforms for their use of recommendation algorithms except where they materially contribute—in a manner that goes beyond the mere amplification of speech—to the alleged illegality. This reading would immunize platforms for decisions that are inextricable from publication, but not for design, engineering, or other decisions that cause harm.

Status: Oral argument is scheduled for September 15, 2026.

Case Information: Patterson v. Meta Platforms, Inc., APL-2025-00158 (N.Y. Court of Appeals).

To meet this moment, I stepped down from my role as President of Delta College in Michigan to lead the Alliance for Higher Education, a coalition focused on uniting higher ed institutions to better protect them from recent attacks on their independence, financial stability, service to students, and the ability to teach, research, and explore freely. After four years of training university leadership specifically on navigating anti-free speech, anti-democratic legislation, one truth revealed itself: For higher ed to survive this period of sustained attack, its institutions and leadership must fight for and protect the sector in ways it has not in the past.

Recent authoritarian attacks have targeted a significant vulnerability of knowledge-producing organizations—the threat of revenue loss. Higher ed institutions rely on funding from donors and state or federal governments to build out extensive budgets that fund faculty and staff salaries, student scholarships, and facility maintenance. When significant portions of this funding are threatened—say when the federal government threatens to revoke a federal grant—jobs could be lost, students can no longer be supported, and buildings or programs on campus are shuttered. That places enormous financial stress on an institution’s administration, and authoritarian efforts have targeted this pain point to coerce academic institutions into adhering to certain ideological values.

For nearly a decade, leaders in higher education have attempted to guard against this vulnerability by engaging in a strategy of risk-averse appeasement of authoritarian interests. Administrators believed that workarounds, strategically ‘waiting for the storm to pass,’ and what they perceived to be ‘creative’ legal or operational techniques would preserve their missions. Institutions renamed offices from Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to avoid any signals of ‘equity,’ ‘race,’ or ‘sexuality.’ Some boards ousted administrators who failed to comply with federal demands to dismantle DEI programs. Others chose to remain ‘neutral’ in this context, but the lack of voice about the political environment left faculty and staff unclear and self-censoring their curriculum, research, and interview processes.

Whatever the merits of these strategies in the past, they cannot help institutions at a moment when an authoritarian movement ingrained at the federal and state levels has them directly in its sights. Unfortunately, however, many institutions still respond with risk-averse tactics, implementing policies that impinge or completely eliminate protections for free speech and academic freedom. Moreover, these policies allow a culture of fear to permeate their institutions, inducing faculty, staff, and students to self-censor in the absence of leadership that defends their institution’s independence.

But institutional practices are only part of the problem in this moment.

For decades (if not centuries), knowledge-producing organizations have competed with one another, whether that be for top talent in students and faculty or for funding itself. As a result, higher ed institutions often view themselves as isolated in both self-interest and mission. Although such postures have contributed to American higher education being the envy of the world, they also weakened this sector in another critical way: it is highly fragmented and its influence is scattered among thousands of organizations nationwide with little incentive to build coalitions or work together.

The higher education sector is comprised of 4,000 colleges, each with varying dependence on federal and state funding for their work. With the deeply fragmented nature of the sector described above, institutions are often not aware of the extent to which other institutions depend on various forms of financial support or whether other institutions’ funding is under attack. Proof of this rests in the fact that national attention on the assault on higher education reached its highest threshold only when Ivy League universities were held hostage by the Trump administration in an effort to truncate free speech and academic inquiry. Yet, this certainly wasn’t the first time institutions of higher education had been attacked by authoritarian forces. Just a few years prior, public institutions in Florida, Texas, Indiana, and Oklahoma faced similar hostile takeovers by state governments, including broad attacks on civil and free speech rights.

If the higher education sector had been united in coalition, these early attacks on higher ed institutions in states like Florida would have been seen as a bellwether. It could have resulted in a united response to protect the values of academic freedom, free speech, and civil rights. Finally, it could have also prevented larger attacks on other institutions like the Ivy League universities, demonstrating to the modern authoritarian movement that institutions of higher learning are not to be messed with and would work together to fight back. Instead, institutions and their leadership, out of both self-interest and fear, only reacted when they themselves were attacked. This resulted in the authoritarian attack on higher ed metastasizing to 21 different states and to the federal level.

In this context, higher education institutions need to band together to form coalitions and protect one another. It must be recognized at this point that an attack on one is an attack on all. In some states, public institutions have already lost their freedoms, and the authoritarian movement has won. Institutions left unaffected so far must help restore these freedoms for others, or they too might lose their freedoms one day.

At present, there are four distinct kinds of political and legislative contexts facing states:1 1. These same contexts can be present in any state depending on board of trustee make-up.

1. States that have been deeply impacted. These states have developed legislation that has often been found to be unconstitutional. For instance, Florida’s S.T.O.P. Woke Act was recently found unconstitutional by the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But the damage to higher education institutions and students is already complete with curriculum being eviscerated and offices supporting minority students being eliminated. Moreover, Florida has also adopted a broad definition of “terrorism” that will further chill speech and infringe on press freedom. (Other states that have been deeply impacted by attacks on academic freedom include Ohio, Texas, and Iowa.)
2. States that have already been impacted, and face further potential threats. Kentucky, for instance, has a governor who has stood in the gap between right-wing lawmakers and an all-out assault on knowledge. (North Carolina is similarly situated in this regard.)
3. States that have stood strong in support of knowledge and higher education, but are subject to shifting political winds based on elections. (An example of this is Wisconsin.)
4. States that can be models of protecting free speech and promoting freedom of ideas, knowledge, and equity. (Look to Illinois and California.)

To help create a national defense coalition, we need a data-based approach that intertwines with efforts to enforce free speech protections. For instance, in Florida, a state that has launched the most sweeping attacks on First Amendment rights, the impacts of these attacks can be quantified. Data reveal that faculty and staff are leaving Florida for states with fewer restrictions, worsening the learning experience for students and creating a “brain drain” of higher ed faculty talent.

In the face of authoritarianism, a pragmatic but forceful approach that illustrates the negative outcomes of restricting free speech on a state in both economic and democratic terms is necessary. Legal and moral rationale are not stopping the attacks on institutions, and so we will need a new way to respond. Capturing new data on the impacts of attacks on higher education will allow for that, and this will be a central part of the Alliance for Higher Education’s work with a hope of impacting federal legislation and economic support to institutions focused on academic freedom, freedom of speech, and uplifting all students.

Finally, for a strong national coalition to form in opposition to authoritarian attacks, our sector needs leaders who are fully prepared for the authoritarian moment. Training for leadership needs to pivot from focusing on simple administration to understanding how to adhere to and fight for values in the context of a decades-long project to assault democracy. The Alliance for Higher Education has developed the curriculum for just this sort of training. And the sector requires us to consider it as an imperative.

With these efforts, we have a chance at defending higher education and our shared values, such as the pursuit of knowledge without political interference.

During the first Trump administration, OIRA approved a proposal requiring nearly all visa applicants to disclose their social media identifiers to the State Department. During the Biden administration, OIRA rejected two similar Department of Homeland Security social media disclosure proposals, in one case after questioning the proposal’s usefulness. During the second Trump administration, the government sought again to institute a social media disclosure requirement on several of the exact same forms, and this time, without explanation, OIRA approved the request. The Institute’s lawsuit seeks records that could explain OIRA’s decisions, shed light on whether social media disclosure requirements are effective, and reveal what evidence or analysis, if any, supported OIRA’s reversal. Those records may also help the public evaluate the policies that affect millions of travelers and applicants for visas and immigration benefits and implicate important First Amendment interests.

The lawsuit builds on the Knight Institute’s broader work challenging the government’s use of social media information in visa vetting. The Institute is also pursuing a related FOIA lawsuit.

Status: Complaint filed on August 18, 2026.

Case Information: Knight First Amendment Inst. at Columbia Univ. v. Off. of Mgmt. & Budget, No. TK-cv-TKTK (S.D.N.Y.).

Trump FCC Chair Brendan Carr has wielded “public interest” to threaten and investigate broadcasters for speech as core to the First Amendment as editing an interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris; reporting on local ICE operations; covering the Iran war in ways that the President dislikes; and continuing to air Jimmy Kimmel’s comedy in the face of White House opposition. Carr recently “reminded” broadcasters of their public interest obligations, in a document that consigns the statutory prohibition on FCC censorship to a footnote and mentions the First Amendment only to discuss the ways in which it arguably does not apply to broadcasters. And Carr’s threats run not only to broadcast licensees, but to the media companies that own and operate them; thus, he has weaponized the public interest authority to leverage licenses of ABC’s owned and operated stations to attack the speech of Jimmy Kimmel and the corporate practices of the Disney corporation.

It comes as no surprise that the second Trump administration has transformed the FCC into a regulatory cudgel aimed at both suppressing opposition speech and rewarding administration-friendly speech; this weaponization of regulatory authority is how modern authoritarians capture journalism. In Hungary, Victor Orbán ran this playbook perhaps most effectively, establishing a Media Council that wielded its licensing and merger review authority to successfully undermine independent media and ensure that his allies controlled all major media outlets.

The public interest standard governs the awarding, renewal, and transfer of licenses (that is, merger approval). The broad authority that it provides the agency over licensees leaves both broadcasters and their corporate parents exposed to government jawboning. The language dates to 1927, when scarcity of radio frequency was a major problem and the modern conception of free speech had not yet coalesced in the Supreme Court or the public imagination. Today, multivocality exists far beyond the airwaves, and the vestigial public interest standard has been transmuted into a tool of abuse. And, while the recent volume and frequency of abuse is unprecedented, Democrats have not been immune from the temptation to use the authority to suppress speech.

Meanwhile, there’s a growing consensus on the libertarian right that the FCC should be eliminated entirely, in part based on these abuses. But the specific problem that Carr’s term has highlighted is the breadth of the FCC’s content regulation authorities. The Supreme Court could take a major step toward solving this problem by updating its jurisprudence on First Amendment rights in the broadcast context to account for these developments—its 1969 decision in Red Lion is its most recent decision directly on point—but it is Congress that is best situated to solve the problem by trimming the relevant statutory authority.

Congress must replace the FCC’s current broad and vague public interest authority with a definition explicitly enumerating permitted areas of regulation—and with respect to content regulation authorities those should be exceedingly narrow. Reform legislation must make clear that there is no residual, unenumerated FCC power to regulate speech. This specific definition should foreclose the FCC from, for example, sua sponte determining that “partisanship” violates the public interest standard and imposing license consequences based on its assessment of a station’s partisan content.

It is most imperative that legislation explicitly repeal the “news distortion” policy, an uncodified authority to which the FCC has laid claim for decades and which has been a key vector of recent abuse. A bipartisan coalition of former FCC commissioners and chairs (which my organization represents) have united behind the need to repeal the policy in order to protect speech. As the Supreme Court recently put it in Moody v. Netchoice, “it is no job for government to decide what counts as the right balance of private expression—to ‘un-bias’ what it thinks biased, rather than to leave such judgments to speakers and their audiences.”

Congress should also consider whether other content regulations, such as children’s television requirements and indecency and obscenity rules, still make sense in today’s media environment—with an eye to the fact that in the context of broadcast licensing, all regulatory requirements risk becoming vectors for government suppression of speech. Current statutes also give the FCC election-related content regulation authorities—the separately codified equal opportunities and lowest unit charge requirements. These each have played crucial roles in the election information ecosystem, and have shaped Americans’ expectations about it, such that removing them abruptly would create real confusion. But they also create opportunities for abuse, and more thinking about long-term reforms is needed.

Simultaneously, Congress should strengthen section 326 of the Communications Act, the anti-censorship provision. That language makes clear that the FCC lacks any “power of censorship… and no regulation or condition shall be promulgated or fixed by the Commission which shall interfere with the right of free speech…” But the FCC and the Supreme Court have suggested the provision mostly concerns prior restraints, and it has not prevented the FCC from imposing license consequences for content after the fact. Reform legislation should clarify that the FCC may never impose a regulation or condition, including any license consequences, for licensee speech beyond the enumerated speech authorities—and any action at all that constitutes viewpoint discrimination or retaliation.

Congress should further strengthen the ban on censorship by including a private right of action along the lines of the one described in the recently-introduced JAWBONE Act—so that the burden is on the agency to demonstrate that its action does not violate the statute or the First Amendment.

Finding solutions to protect speech has never been more urgent; the Supreme Court’s decision in Slaughter has called into question the status of the FCC as an independent agency—and Chair Carr has disclaimed any independence. While this shift may necessitate deeper structural changes to the agency going forward, legislative amendments to curtail the public interest authority are the most narrowly-tailored solution to the speech suppression problem lately posed by the FCC.

The following can be attributed to Katie Fallow, deputy litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. 

“Disney is entirely justified in asking a court to stop the FCC’s attempt to coerce its broadcast stations’ programming through an unlawful campaign of regulatory scrutiny. The lawsuit makes clear that this campaign has already chilled ABC’s speech. The First Amendment prohibits the government from using regulatory threats to chill speech that the government doesn’t like, which is exactly what the FCC is doing here.”

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, lorraine.kenny@knightcolumbia.org. 

“Social media platforms are important forums for expressive activity, and the government’s invasive and chilling social media vetting scheme burdens First Amendment-protected speech and association,” said Nicola Morrow, legal fellow at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “Social media disclosure requirements affect millions of travelers and immigrants each year, and after the government previously rejected similar proposals, the public deserves to know what changed and how the government explains its reversal.”

In 2019, OIRA approved a State Department proposal requiring nearly all visa applicants to disclose their social media identifiers. It later rejected two similar Department of Homeland Security proposals, in one case after questioning the requirement’s usefulness. Under the second Trump administration, however, OIRA approved a proposal to institute a social media disclosure requirement on the exact same forms at issue in the proposal it had previously rejected, without publicly explaining its change in position.

The Knight Institute submitted three FOIA requests between 2024 and 2026 seeking records related to these decisions. After OMB failed to produce responsive records, the Institute filed suit.

The requested records could shed light on whether social media disclosure requirements are effective, what evidence supported OIRA’s decisions, and why the agency reversed course on policies that affect millions of travelers and applicants for visas and immigration benefits each year.

The lawsuit builds on the Knight Institute’s broader work challenging the government’s use of social media information in visa vetting. The Institute is also pursuing a related FOIA lawsuit.

Read today’s complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York here.

Read more about the case here.

Lawyers on the case include Nicola Morrow and Anna Diakun of the Knight First Amendment Institute.

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, lorraine.kenny@knightcolumbia.org. 

MEMORANDUM

To: President Maurie McInnis and General Counsel Alexander Dreier

From: Serena Mayeri and Amanda Shanor

Re: Analysis of Potential Trump-Yale Deal

Date: June 30, 2026

Introduction

We write as legal scholars who have studied the Trump administration’s agreements with universities and other institutions, and as alumni who care deeply about Yale.1 1. Serena Mayeri, Professor, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (Yale J.D. and Ph.D, History) and Amanda Shanor, Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School (Yale B.A., J.D., and Ph.D., Law). We write in our individual capacities. We understand that Yale is under tremendous pressure and recognize the appeal of negotiating a settlement with the government in attempts to ward off the attacks faced by Harvard and other elite universities, including our own (the University of Pennsylvania). But we are gravely concerned about the potential implications of Yale reaching such a deal, even one that appears narrow in scope.

This memo briefly analyzes the concerns raised by previous agreements between the federal government and universities. We pay particular attention to the University of Virginia (UVA) agreement, which, like the Yale investigation, appeared to focus on race-related policies.2 2. Agreement between the United States of America and the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia (Oct. 20, 2025), https://federalinfo.virginia.edu/sites/federalinfo/files/2025-10/US-University-of-Virginia-Standstill-Agreement-20251022.pdf [hereinafter “UVA Agreement”]. Press coverage often characterized UVA’s deal as focused narrowly on DEI. See, e.g., Press Release, U.S. Dep’t of Justice, The Justice Department Announces Agreement with University of Virginia (Oct. 22, 2025), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-agreement-university-virginia-0; ‘A fair deal or a ‘surrender? Stakeholders weigh in on Trump-UVA agreement, Higher Ed Dive (Oct. 24, 2025), https://www.highereddive.com/news/a-fair-deal-or-a-surrender-stakeholders-weigh-in-on-trump-uva-agreemen/803786/; What Did the University of Virginia Agree To?, Inside Higher Ed (Oct. 24, 2025), https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/2025/10/24/what-did-university-virginia-agree. Supporters touted its terms that purportedly protected academic freedom and avoided external monitors or large monetary penalties. See UVA Agreement, supra note 1, at 1 (“Both Parties affirm the importance of and their support for academic freedom. The United States does not aim to dictate the content of academic speech or curricula, and no provision of this Agreement . . . shall be construed as giving the United States authority to dictate the content of academic speech or curricula.”). The reality, however, was very different.

**

The Trump administration has followed a consistent playbook in its negotiations with universities and other civil society institutions. First, the government threatens or imposes catastrophic financial consequences, such as funding cutoffs and other penalties.3 3. Those threats have included, e.g., termination of federal funding, withdrawal of tax-exempt status; revocation of universities’ ability to enroll foreign students; cancellation of security clearances; imposition of a steep endowment tax; and suspension and debarment from eligibility for federal grants and student loans. See Kim Lane Scheppele, Bullying universities, The Contrarian (July 28, 2025), https://www.contrariannews.org/p/trumps-regulation-by-deal. Next, the administration coerces institutions to agree to vague and often contradictory definitions of concepts such as discrimination, equality, sex, antisemitism, protest, and terrorism, and the scope of executive power (e.g., its authority to change the terms of the agreement, impose penalties not authorized by law, or enforce rules not found in law).

Several troubling features are common to the university agreements:

1. First, the agreements bind schools to vague, shifting, and contradictory definitions of prohibited conduct that go far beyond and may violate established law.
2. Second, even in the absence of external monitoring, the creation of possible personal civil and criminal liability for university leaders functionally ensures ongoing federal oversight and control.
3. Third, these agreements exert a chilling effect on academic inquiry, institutional independence, political discourse, and free expression—values that lie at the heart of Yale’s mission.
4. Fourth, university deals have not insulated schools from pressure or interference. If anything, they have invited further demands.
5. Finally, these deals contain myriad unconstitutional and unlawful provisions. Overwhelmingly, universities and other institutions that have pushed back against similar pressure from the administration rather than signing agreements have been successful in court.

I. Vague, Ambiguous, and Shifting Definitions 

Existing university agreements commit schools to legal definitions and interpretations that go beyond and sometimes violate established law. For example, UVA promised to follow the over- and under-inclusive definition of discrimination contained in (non-binding) July 2025 Department of Justice guidance.4 4. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, Guidance for Recipients of Federal Funding Regarding Unlawful Discrimination (July 29, 2025), https://www.justice.gov/ag/media/1409486/dl [hereinafter DOJ Guidance]. That guidance went far beyond the Supreme Court’s ruling in SFFA v. Harvard, which explicitly allows colleges to consider, for example, how an applicant’s race—“through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise”—has affected their lives, and acknowledges diversity as a laudable goal.5 5. Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard Coll., 600 U.S. 181, 214–15, 230–31 (2023) (describing universities’ diversity interests as “worthy” and “commendable”). The DOJ guidance, in contrast, bars the use of race, sex, or other protected characteristics, “no matter the program’s labels, objectives, or intentions.”6 6. DOJ Guidance, supra note 5, at 1. The guidance appears to prohibit the use of race-neutral “proxies,” including indicia of socioeconomic status.7 7. Id. at 5, 8. It bans criteria such as “cultural competence,” “lived experience,” “first generation” status, or “underserved geographic areas” if the government suspects they are being used to increase the representation of racial or other minorities.8 8. Id. at 2, 5, 8-9. The DOJ instructs schools: “Before implementing facially neutral criteria [such as “low-income”], rigorously evaluate and document whether they are proxies for race, sex, or other protected characteristics.” Id. at 8-9.

The DOJ guidance is full of ambiguities and internal contradictions, creating uncertainty about what would and would not be considered a violation of the UVA agreement’s terms. For example, its broad definitions of unlawful discrimination could be read to prohibit reliance on virtually any criteria other than those that tend to decrease diversity, such as standardized test scores. An admissions boost—or even financial aid—to students who have experienced economic hardship, or to first-generation students, could be interpreted by the government to violate the agreement. Yale’s admirable leadership in creating programs to bolster first-generation students and those from low-income backgrounds could be read to run afoul of these strictures, especially if they disproportionately benefit students of color.

Perhaps more dangerously, because the DOJ guidance is internally contradictory, or at best subject to multiple interpretations—some of which violate established law—pledging adherence to it can expose the university to liability from all sides. Vagueness, ambiguity, and contradictory provisions are a feature of many of the government’s deals with universities, perhaps by design. For example, Brown’s agreement requires that Title VI be applied evenhandedly to all, but then promises targeted outreach to students from Jewish day schools.9 9. Resolution Agreement Between the United States and Brown University §§ B.6, C (July 30, 2025), https://www.brown.edu/sites/default/files/brown-and-united-states-resolution-agreement_July-30-2025.pdf [hereinafter “Brown Agreement”]. Some of the agreements prohibit discrimination based on national origin while requiring schools to hand over incriminating information about student visa holders.10 10. See, e.g., Resolution Agreement between the United States of America and Northwestern University 7 (Nov. 28, 2025), https://www.northwestern.edu/provost/docs/federal-updates/resolution-agreement-united-states-northwestern.pdf [hereinafter “Northwestern Agreement”]. Some require (or purport to require) schools to abide by a definition of sex drawn from an executive order11 11. Exec. Order No. 14,168, 90 Fed. Reg. 8,615 (Jan. 30, 2025) (defining “sex” as, inter alia, “an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female”). that departs from accepted science and violates federal and state laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.12 12. See, e.g., Northwestern Agreement, supra note 11, at 2. In the absence of judicial precedents that could inform the interpretation of these vague terms, there is no background understanding against which the university could reliably predict the agreement’s meaning.

Further, some of the agreements punish universities for following then-prevailing understandings of the law. For example, the Trump administration froze $175 million in federal funding to Penn because a transgender swimmer competed on the women’s swim team at a time when both Title IX and NCAA rules at least allowed and arguably required her participation. The Penn deal to restore funding thus rested on a retroactive application of the Trump administration’s reinterpretation of Title IX to proscribe actions whose permissibility had not previously been questioned.13 13. See Press Release, U.S. Dep’t of Educ., U.S. Department of Education Announces the University of Pennsylvania Has Entered into a Resolution Agreement to Resolve Its Title IX Violations (July 1, 2025), https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-announces-university-of-pennsylvania-has-entered-resolution-agreement-resolve-its-title-ix-violations; Resolution Agreement Between the U.S. Dep't of Educ., Office for Civil Rights, and the University of Pennsylvania, Docket No. 03-25-6901 (July 1, 2025), https://ocrcas.ed.gov/sites/default/files/ocr-letters-and-agreements/03256901-b.pdf.

II. Ongoing Federal Oversight and Control

The lack of formal external monitoring might appear to distinguish UVA’s agreement from other deals such as Columbia’s and Brown’s. The reality, however, is that the UVA agreement’s terms—similar to provisions of the Cornell and Northwestern deals—include ongoing federal oversight and control and expose university leaders to civil and criminal liability. The deals require that various administrators, including Presidents and members of boards of trustees, certify quarterly, under penalty of perjury, the university’s compliance with their terms.14 14. See, e.g., UVA Agreement, supra note 1, at 2; Agreement between the United States of America and Cornell University 2-3 (Nov. 7, 2025), https://statements.cornell.edu/2025/documents/cornell-settlement-agreement.pdf (hereinafter “Cornell Agreement”); Northwestern Agreement, supra note 11, at 10. The administration’s declared intention to use the False Claims Act to prosecute “civil rights fraud” by universities15 15. Press Release, Justice Department Establishes Civil Rights Fraud Initiative (May 19, 2025), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-establishes-civil-rights-fraud-initiative. and to encourage private qui tam actions to this effect mean that these provisions place university leaders—and potentially all employees responsible for signing grants—in serious legal jeopardy.16 16. FCA actions can result in treble damages and other penalties. This is particularly true given the ambiguities and contradictions described above.

The UVA deal, celebrated as a “constructive outcome”17 17. Paul Mahoney, Message to the UVA Community (Oct. 22, 2025), https://news.virginia.edu/content/interim-president-paul-mahoneys-message-university-community-uvas-agreement-justice. that upholds “the university’s principles and independence,”18 18. UVA Reaches Agreement with U.S. Justice Department on Outstanding Compliance Investigations, UVA News (Oct. 22, 2025), https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-reaches-agreement-us-justice-department-outstanding-compliance-investigations (quoting Rector Rachel Sheridan). in fact subjected the university to even greater legal peril than if it had done nothing at all.19 19. This was perhaps by design, insofar as the political opponents of the leaders who signed the agreement were likely to be the ones subject to it. See James E. Ryan, President Emeritus, University of Virginia, to Faculty Senators (Nov. 14, 2025), https://www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/files/2025-11/Jim%20Ryan%20letter.pdf. We would be happy to provide additional information and resources about the context of the UVA agreement. It provided that if the university made underspecified changes related to “DEI” to the federal government’s satisfaction, in 2028 the administration would close open investigations into the university.20 20. UVA Agreement, supra note 1, at 2-3. Under the agreement’s express terms, the federal government remains free to open new inquiries at any time and to investigate noncompliance with the agreement itself, not just federal law.21 21. See id. Further, the government reserves the right, at any time and for any reason, to terminate the agreement and to “pursue enforcement actions, monetary fines, or grant or funding terminations” pertaining to any past or future actions.22 22. Id. at 2.

This may be the most dangerous aspect of these deals: they attempt to establish the executive’s sole, unlimited, and arbitrary power to say what the law is and what the Constitution means—and to impose its own shifting interpretations on institutions at will.

III. Chilling Effects on Academic Inquiry and Freedom of Expression

University agreements contain other troubling provisions that infringe the privacy, freedoms, and safety of university affiliates. Requirements include disclosure of information about students and university employees, including not only admissions-related data but also information about school policy violations that the government retains the prerogative to share across agencies and with law enforcement.23 23. See, e.g., Northwestern Agreement, supra note 11, at 4. References to the “prevention of terrorist financing” may appear to concern foreign funding.24 24. Cornell Agreement, supra note 14, at 4. But they may also facilitate governmental attempts to impose broader censorship and legal penalties on universities, their donors, and community members pursuant to the President’s executive actions targeting those the government considers to promote “extremism on migration, race, and gender,” or “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality,” as “domestic terrorists.”25 25. National Security Presidential Memorandum No. 7, 90 Fed. Reg. 47,225 (Sept. 30, 2025). The government recently sought up to 100-year sentences for ICE protesters it labeled antifa. Dep’t of Justice, Press Release, Leader of Antifa Cell Members in North Texas Sentenced to 100 Years in Prison for Terrorist Attack on ICE Facility (June 23, 2026), https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-antifa-cell-members-north-texas-sentenced-100-years-prison-terrorist-attack-ice.

These agreements often contain terms that purport to safeguard “academic freedom” and promise no government interference with curricula or freedom of expression.26 26. See, e.g., Northwestern Agreement, supra note 11, at 2 (“No provision of this Agreement, individually or taken together, shall be construed as giving the United States authority to dictate faculty hiring, University hiring, admission decisions, Northwestern’s curriculum, or the content of academic speech and research.”). But if universities can face drastic financial penalties anytime the federal government decides that the institution is out of compliance with the agreement, the chilling effect on faculty, administrators, and students will inhibit free academic inquiry and robust political discourse—values that are core to Yale’s mission.

IV. Unconstitutional and Unlawful Demands

The government’s proposed Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education and individual university deals executed before and after contain many unlawful and unconstitutional terms. Many of their provisions violate the First Amendment rights of freedom of speech, association, and academic freedom; the separation of powers and constitutional constraints on executive power; constitutional limits on federal spending power; equal protection; and due process. Some also infringe state constitutions and state laws.

These legal and constitutional flaws are important for at least two reasons. First, they mean that universities that enter such agreements accede to the government’s end run around the Constitution and the law as enacted by Congress and interpreted by the courts. Second, they suggest Yale might likewise be victorious in court should it decide to push back against the government’s demands, as schools such as Harvard, UCLA, and Penn have done.

We will note some common legal and constitutional infirmities here; a more complete legal analysis of the Compact may prove helpful in assessing a Yale deal.27 27. Amanda Shanor & Serena Mayeri, A Brief Legal Analysis of the Department of Education’s Proposed Compact for Higher Education, Knight First Amendment Inst. (Oct. 8, 2025), https://knightcolumbia.org/blog/a-brief-legal-analysis-of-the-department-of-educations-proposed-compact-for-higher-education.

• The First Amendment (speech, association, and academic freedom)

Universities enjoy First Amendment rights. The First Amendment prohibits the government from discriminating among viewpoints or using government power to favor or disfavor certain messages or associations. The Court also has made clear that when the government provides funding for other parties’ speech (such as research), it may not discriminate based on viewpoint.28 28. Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U.S. 819 (1995). And it may not limit what the recipient says using private funds.29 29. Id.; Fed. Comm. Comm’n v. League of Women Voters, 468 U.S. 364 (1984); Nat’l Endowment for the Arts v. Finley, 524 U.S. 569, 587 (1998).Just as under the unconstitutional conditions doctrine, the government cannot require, as a condition of certain funding, that a recipient relinquish its First Amendment rights to say whatever it would like on its own dime.30 30. The Constitution likewise forbids the government from using its leverage over an intermediary (such as universities) to suppress the expression of another (their faculty, staff, and students). Nat’l Rifle Ass’n of Am. v. Vullo, 602 U.S. 175 (2024); Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58 (1963). These principles protect universities against, inter alia, governmental efforts to impose or influence what is taught or researched or who teaches or researches (including as promoting “viewpoint diversity”); punish institutions presumed to be “woke” or otherwise out of ideological step with the administration; institute protest or other speech rules that go beyond narrow First Amendment exceptions (e.g., true threats, incitement, or severe-or-pervasive harassment); compel universities to disclose the personal information of faculty that, e.g., study certain topics or join particular groups; or collect information about syllabi or faculty viewpoints.

• Separation of powers and limits on executive power

The power to spend and to make law belong to Congress, not the President. With respect to entirely domestic issues like the funding of U.S. research institutions, the executive derives all power to act from Congressional statute, absent which executive action is unconstitutional.31 31. See Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 635 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring). No statute authorizes the executive to impose the conditions on research funding, tax exempt status, or the like that the administration has sought by private agreement, still less by fiat rather than rulemaking.32 32. See Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 551 et seq. What is more, the recently developed major-questions doctrine likely demands clear congressional authorization, absent here.33 33. West Virginia v. EPA, 597 U.S. 697, 721 (2022). When acting on a major question, “something more than a merely plausible textual basis for the agency action is necessary. The agency instead must point to ‘clear congressional authorization’ for the power it claims.” Id. at 723. No federal law authorizes the executive to withhold money Congress has authorized for research funds if universities do not meet the administration’s demands. The current administration routinely has flouted procedural requirements for suspending federal funds under civil rights statutes such as Title VI and Title IX.

• Spending power limits

The government may attach conditions to federal funds only if the conditions are clear, related to the spending program’s purpose, not independently unconstitutional, and not coercive.34 34. South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987). Threats to withhold all federal support from a university dwarfs the roughly ten percent of a state budget the Supreme Court deemed “a gun to the head,”35 35. University of Pennsylvania Fiscal Year 2025 Operating Budget; University of Pennsylvania Fiscal Year 2026 Operating Budget; Jason Cohn, How Much Federal Funding Do Colleges and Universities Receive?, Urban Inst. (May 8, 2025), https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/how-much-federal-funding-do-colleges-and-universities-receive. making related demands likely unconstitutionally coercive as applied to public universities. Many agreements sought from private universities violate the clarity and no-unconstitutional-condition limits that apply to private recipients.

• Equal protection / civil rights statutes

The government’s terms commit universities to rules the Constitution and civil rights statutes do not impose. In addition to reaching far beyond SFFA v. Harvard,36 36. 600 U.S. 181 (2023). the government’s terms often prohibit conduct the law permits or requires. For example, the executive-order definition of “sex” that some agreements incorporate departs from Title VII as construed in Bostock37 37. Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. 644 (2020). and from many states’ antidiscrimination laws, so compliance in one direction risks liability in another. Additionally, many agreements collapse distinct legal standards—for instance, treating race, sex, and national origin alike, whereas courts analyze these categories differently.

• Due process / void for vagueness

A condition is unconstitutionally vague when people of ordinary intelligence must guess at its meaning,38 38. Connally v. General Constr. Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391 (1926); Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108 (1972). and greater precision is required where First Amendment freedoms and severe penalties are at stake, as is generally true of key terms in university agreements. 39 39. Village of Hoffman Estates v. Flipside, Hoffman Estates, Inc., 455 U.S. 489, 498-99 (1982); Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 200 (1991) (“[W]e have recognized that the university is a traditional sphere of free expression so fundamental to the functioning of our society that the Government’s ability to control speech within that sphere by means of conditions attached to the expenditure of Government funds is restricted by the vagueness and overbreadth doctrines of the First Amendment”). Terms like “proxies,” “DEI,” and undefined civility, conduct, or protest standards invite arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement and drive institutions to over-comply. This vagueness makes the certification requirements perilous: requiring university employees to certify compliance with standards whose meaning is unknown or shifts at the government’s discretion necessarily puts them at risk.

• Unconstitutional conditions

The Constitution not only protects the foregoing rights but also prohibits the government from conditioning benefits—including discretionary benefits to which a recipient has no right—on relinquishing or waiving their constitutional rights, First Amendment or otherwise.40 40. See Agency for Int’l Dev. v. All. for Open Soc’y Int’l, Inc., 570 U.S. 205, 218-19 (2013).

The agreements that the administration has sought with universities—and the actions they have taken to pressure them into agreement—include many of these unlawful or unconstitutional elements. For this reason, universities, law firms and institutions that have rejected the government’s coercive deals have been overwhelmingly successful in challenging them in court.41 41. See, e.g., President & Fellows of Harvard Coll. v. U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., 788 F. Supp. 3d 182 (D. Mass. 2025) (granting summary judgment and permanent injunction on First Amendment, Title VI, and APA grounds), appeals docketed, Nos. 25-2230, 25-2231 (1st Cir.); Am. Ass’n of Univ. Professors v. Trump, 815 F. Supp. 3d 907 (N.D. Cal. 2025) (preliminary injunction barring administration from threatening or freezing University of California funding on civil-rights grounds); Am. Ass’n of Univ. Professors v. Rubio, 802 F. Supp. 3d 120 (D. Mass. 2025) (finding administration’s visa revocation and deportation policy unconstitutionally viewpoint-discriminatory in violation of First Amendment and APA), appeal pending (1st Cir.); Perkins Coie LLP v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 783 F. Supp. 3d 105 (D.D.C. 2025) (permanently enjoining Exec. Order No. 14,230), appeal docketed, No. 25-5241 (D.C. Cir.); Jenner & Block LLP v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 784 F. Supp. 3d 76 (D.D.C. 2025) (permanently enjoining Exec. Order No. 14,246), appeal docketed No. 25-5265 (D.C. Cir.); Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP v. Executive Office of the President, 784 F. Supp. 3d 127 (D.D.C. 2025) (permanently enjoining Exec. Order No. 14,250), appeal docketed, No. 25-5277 (D.C. Cir.); Susman Godfrey LLP v. Executive Office of the President, 789 F. Supp. 3d 15 (D.D.C. 2025) (permanently enjoining Exec. Order No. 14,263), appeal docketed, No. 25-5310 (D.C. Cir.). Recognizing the high stakes for democracy and civil society, alumni, students, and faculty have rallied behind institutions that stand up for their rights, likely to the schools’ broader benefit—just as law firms that have refused deals have fared better on many metrics than those that have signed them.42 42. See, e.g., Roy Strom, Paul Weiss Deal with Trump Haunts Industry One Year Later, Bloomberg News (March 19, 2026); Ankush Khardori, The Fallout Is Growing on Trump’s Deals with Law Firms, Politico (July 10, 2025), https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/10/trump-law-firms-deals-mess-column-00445259.

Conclusion

We understand that the government’s pressure campaign places Yale and other schools in an unenviably difficult situation. But the existential nature of the threat is a reason not to consent to deals that amount, at best, to conditional reprieves of uncertain duration and value.

Universities that have made deals often face continued pressures and demands. Penn, for example, made an early agreement with the Trump administration a year ago and has been targeted on many fronts ever since.

Moreover, a deal with Yale will reverberate far beyond the university. The government undoubtedly hopes that other schools facing similar investigations will follow suit—increasing its leverage over higher education more broadly.

Yale should instead stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law. Schools and law firms that have pushed back have won an almost unbroken string of legal victories. A powerful coalition of faculty, students, and alumni united across ideological, disciplinary, and geographic lines last year to reject the administration’s “compact” for higher education, and Yale can expect similarly robust support from a growing network of supporters around the country should it defend its institutional independence.

Read more information about the event here. 

Actions against research universities have received much of the major media attention—including for cuts in research funding and international student visas; immigration-related arrests and detention; endowment tax increases and foreign-gifts scrutiny; accreditation changes; and demands for changes in admissions, athletics, bathroom access, hiring, and programming via executive orders, warning letters, civil rights law enforcement, and hefty “fines.” But the administration’s targeting of higher education reaches far more broadly. Community colleges, for example, are threatened with cuts to longstanding workforce-development programs, and minority-serving institutions have lost millions of dollars in discretionary funds that previously supported their work.

Protecting vibrant campuses, whether from this administration or others in the future, requires recognizing that the federal government has a vast array of mechanisms that are mostly designed to support schools but also include oversight and other authority that can be repurposed for punitive purposes. These levers function like Whac-A-Mole: Whenever a court limits the government’s use of one lever, another pops up. (This dynamic can also be seen in state efforts to control higher education.) A meaningful strategy thus requires attention not only to constraining misuse of specific mechanisms but also to shoring up colleges and universities’ capacity to protect themselves in an environment with myriad entry points for government pressure. 

The web of federal levers

A full review of the government’s authorities that can be turned into pressure points against higher education institutions is far beyond a blog post’s scope, but a few examples of less well-known levers may help illustrate the challenge just described and give context for the observations that follow.

One of these levers, little known outside of expert circles, is the administration’s campaign to stop colleges and universities from partnering with the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement (NSLVE). Founded in 2013, NSLVE is the largest national study designed to inform schools’ student-voter engagement efforts. In February 2026, the Department of Education warned thousands of higher education presidents that using NSLVE data would put them “at risk of being found in violation” of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), with penalties including withholding and recovery of Department funds. Adding fuel to the fire, the Department announced it was investigating Tufts University, which houses the nonpartisan study, and asked the university to pause release of its next report while the investigation is pending, which the university agreed to do. (On its website, NSLVE explains that it complies with FERPA “by design.”) Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said that “American colleges and universities should be focused on teaching, learning, and research – not influencing elections,” but the real result is that postsecondary institutions, which have a legal obligation to help students register to vote, have less information to guide their civic-participation efforts.

Another can be seen in how the Trump administration’s pressure on schools to end support for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs shifted to technical regulatory channels after losing in litigation. The campaign began with high visibility—a day-one executive order titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” followed by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights’ much-criticized guidance on how it would implement the Supreme Court’s SFFA v. Harvard ruling that rejected consideration of race in college admissions. Declaring that “under the banner of [DEI],” schools are “smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline,” OCR threatened enforcement action against any school receiving federal financial assistance that did not abandon DEI programming contrary to the Trump administration’s expansive view.

A federal district court invalidated the guidance on vagueness and other grounds, writing that the guidance’s failure to “even define what a DEI practice is” risked chilling “the lawful and societally beneficial speech of regulated persons who do not understand what DEI- or race-related speech might be allowed.” Multiple federal courts had earlier put the guidance and related requirements on hold. But the chill had already taken effect as colleges around the country, fearing they would become investigation targets, “closed offices related to diversity, equity and inclusion; scrubbed websites; and cut other programming.” A similar Department of Justice memo warning all federal funding recipients about DEI programs likewise prompted colleges to “close[] campus centers and publications cater[ing] to certain racial or ethnic groups.” (Federal funding conditions based on the DOJ memo have also been invalidated.)

The administration quickly found a workaround by turning to a different source of authority to achieve its goals. Rather than defending the OCR DEI guidance on appeal, it has sought to implement similar restrictions even more broadly by proposing interrelated changes to the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance and the General Service Administration’s (GSA) information-collection system for awards management. The proposals seek to add government-wide funding restrictions and compliance requirements for recipients of federal financial assistance, which currently number roughly 212,000, including schools. OMB’s proposes to add an “[u]nlawful DEI Provision,” among numerous other provisions. GSA’s proposal would require recipients to verify compliance not only with federal law, as has been a longstanding obligation, but also with “relevant executive orders prohibiting unlawful discrimination based on race or color,” including “programs or initiatives that involve discriminatory practices,” including “those labeled as DEI.” (OMB’s proposal also would prohibit federal funding related to “gender ideology,” as defined in an executive order that bars federal recognition of transgender people.)

As one commentator wrote, the proposal, if finalized, “will likely impose many of the same certification requirements [as the invalidated OCR guidance] on colleges and universities that want to receive federal funds, whether that is discretionary grants, formula grants or Title IV student aid” as well as on almost all other recipients of federal-agency funding. The new requirements are pending as each goes through the notice and comment process (see GSA and OMB comments), and many higher education organizations have expressed strong opposition.

Numerous other lesser-known federal pressure points remain available as the administration seeks to restrict campus communications and activities related to diversity and other issues. In February 2026, for example, OCR announced that 31 schools under investigation had ended or agreed to end their partnerships with the PhD Project, an effort that, for several decades, has supported diverse candidates for business doctorates. The Department of Housing and Urban Development found its own entry point into restricting higher education’s DEI efforts, warning schools in June 2026 that it would ensure “maximum accountability” for affinity housing that violates the Fair Housing Act. The Act prohibits discrimination based on race and other characteristics in housing rentals, but the guidance tells schools that “words and phrases, such as ‘diversity,’ ‘multiculturalism,’ ‘safe spaces,’ and ‘intersectional allyship,’ … encourage neo-segregationist schemes” and are “jargonistic words … designed to immunize universities that engage in these potentially unlawful discriminatory practices.”

In addition, changes to the public service loan forgiveness program would let the Secretary of Education disqualify employers that engage in a broad set of ill-defined “illegal activities” related to immigration and transgender people and therefore deny forgiveness eligibility to their employees. The breadth and substantial discretion embedded in these changes drew extensive objections from commenters as well as litigation. Two federal courts blocked the new rule just before its July 1, 2026, effective date, but the administration may continue to defend the rule in court or find other ways to leverage the program to serve its aims. Another government-wide proposed regulation would, amidst its many provisions, put similar restrictions on federal grants, including prohibiting the use of funds for DEI, “gender ideology,” and voter-registration activities as defined by the administration, as well as “[a]ny other initiatives that … promote anti-American values.” Yet another Department of Education proposed regulation would require accreditors to review institutions for whether they appropriately promote and prioritize “intellectual diversity,” a term that is not defined but presumably would be implemented consistent with the administration’s views. And on July 3, 2026, the Department of Education issued its regulatory agenda, which lists 19 ongoing and future plans for regulatory changes.

Three takeaways about the levers and their consequences

Three observations about the government’s multifaceted relationship with schools and its implications for free expression and pluralist campuses are worth noting, even if obvious, because they define the landscape in which any strategies to protect colleges and universities will be implemented.

First, the entwinement is extensive, and we oversimplify the environment at our peril. Many faculty and students think of the institution where they teach or study as “theirs,” albeit subject to decisions of the institution’s leadership. But as just illustrated, the executive branch can choose to exercise substantial authority over an institution’s conduct and operations. Even Project 2025’s 42-page education chapter, which sets out many ways an administration might exploit its sources of authority, is not comprehensive.

Second, the entwinement enables the executive branch to use an assortment of carrots and sticks—funding opportunities, oversight strategy, and the bully pulpit, among others—to shape campus speech environments. These, too, warrant attention in any future-planning efforts.

On the carrot side, for example, the Secretary of Education has authority to establish annual priorities for the agency’s millions of dollars in discretionary funding. Not surprisingly, while secretaries share some very high-level priorities about how to enhance education across the United States (compare DeVos and Cardona), their lead principles (e.g., deregulation vs. equity) and operational plans vary substantially. Until recently, science, health, and technology funding had been less susceptible to partisan shifts, in part because of peer review and other research norms, but recent events reinforce the broad, even if not unlimited, discretion of the executive branch in this domain as well.

The result is that administrations regularly redirect discretionary funds in ways that encourage certain conversations and discourage others. The Trump administration has done this by, for example, dangling benefits for institutions that sign its Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education and repeatedly canceling spending it characterizes as “woke.” The Biden administration did this by taking actions to advance racial and educational equity. More broadly, administrations can shape the campus speech environment by who they place on the federal accreditation and other advisory committees, funding boards, and education research bodies that perform additional oversight, grantmaking, and information-generating functions. On the bully pulpit side, administrations (and Congress) can likewise spotlight institutions for praise or condemnation, setting off a ripple effect of benefits or challenges on campus and beyond.

On the stick side, as illustrated above, an administration can use its high-profile legal authorities to pursue its priorities, as the Trump administration has done in its “crackdown” on higher education, but also can ramp up enforcement of seemingly unrelated laws, such as federal privacy and foreign-gifts restrictions, to exert further pressure. It can likewise shape the landscape by not investigating discrimination claims that do not fit its policy priorities. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, for example, resolved only one percent of its pending cases in 2025, including no resolutions in discrimination cases involving sexual or racial harassment or sexual violence, while bringing numerous actions related to antisemitism, transgender students, and diversity considerations in college admissions.

Third, the mere threat of federal enforcement often prompts change, as illustrated in the DEI examples above. A rational general counsel seeking to avoid conflict with the federal government might advise their institution to steer clear of actions that agencies have flagged as potentially unlawful, even when those agencies have overstepped their authority. Given the bottom-line importance of federal funds for nearly every higher education institution, vanishingly few can afford to face executive-branch hostility. To be clear, this sense of pressure is not unique to the second Trump administration; some commentators have argued that OCR under the Obama administration put undue pressure on colleges and universities to resolve Title IX sexual assault cases and that the Biden administration did the same under Title VI in response to campus protests following October 7, 2023. But what is different, both in degree and kind, is the punitive and sweeping nature of government efforts to demonize and constrict higher education institutions; these are unprecedented by any measure.

The upshot

The upshot, when it comes to government pressure on higher education institutions, is that the power imbalance is real and consequential. Why push back against the government’s overreach in a specific instance if the government can seek the same result by other means?

The answer is not that litigation and law reform are futile but instead that a realistic landscape analysis requires us to think broadly about how to achieve institutional resilience. That analysis makes clear that 1) many federal government mechanisms for interacting with higher education institutions can be implemented in ways that negatively affect campus speech and pluralism, even when administered lawfully; and 2) apart from exceptional cases, most schools are unlikely to risk litigating against the government, even when claims are available, although some occasionally express concerns about proposed regulations, as did several universities (e.g., Columbia, Boston University, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, MIT, University of Washington) by submitting comments on the OMB proposed regulations. (Faculty organizations like the American Association of University Professors and unions like the American Federation of Teachers do not face the same constraints and risks as their members’ institutions and have been willing to pursue a more confrontational course toward the Trump administration, including through numerous lawsuits.)

A few suggestions

Against this backdrop, it may seem that school leaders have little meaningful protection against current and future targeting—but there is actually much that can be done, including efforts related to student acculturation, campus-rules communication, legal compliance, and refining a school’s institutional compass. I’ll describe each briefly below, drawing in part from my experience serving on Columbia University’s leadership team, and flagging why they matter for institutional self-defense as well as for the educational mission.

• Acculturation to contestation of ideas and inclusive education: Many students arrive on campus without understanding why contestation of ideas and an inclusive environment are so integral to higher education. The same is true for some faculty and staff. As a result, a robust free-expression environment that gives all students an opportunity to thrive is not a given. But it can happen when the institution explicitly recognizes contestation and inclusion as mission-driven values and reinforces them with ongoing support, training, and campus-community engagement. (Professor Olatunde C.A. Johnson and I have developed this point at greater length in Campus Crises and the Limits of Title VI.) These efforts do double-duty: They benefit the campus community directly and serve as an institutional resource for showing external audiences, including government and the public, that diverse expression and a pluralist student body must coexist for higher education to succeed.
• Clear and well-communicated campus rules: These are important not only for building internal trust and running effective campus operations but also for defending against federal attacks related to protest management. When rules clearly explain to community members what conduct is prohibited and why, those same explanations can serve as a foundation for defending against external pressures, whether from government or other stakeholders, especially in high-conflict periods.
• Periodic internal compliance reviews: It seems obvious, but schools are better positioned to fend off attacks if they have strong systems in place to ensure and track compliance with their myriad federal obligations as well as internal clarity about where their decisions may draw federal opposition. Periodic internal compliance reviews, akin to the compliance reviews occasionally conducted by some federal agencies, may be helpful for some institutions to proactively identify points of vulnerability and either make changes or develop strategies for defending their positions.
• Institutional compass: The mission of most, if not all, colleges and universities is to enable students to thrive and to participate in the contestation of ideas that defines higher education. By definition, this requires attention and resources attuned to differences as well as similarities among students. Clarity for institutional leaders and the campus community about how and why a school seeks to fulfill this mission can serve as a foundation and institutional compass to guide line-drawing and communications when federal or other pressure mounts. Support from higher education membership networks and organizations, like the American Council on Education, may be especially helpful for prompting cross-school conversations on these issues.

In short, work that aims to enhance campus life for students and other community members can also create a bit of a bulwark against government efforts to penalize and demonize individual schools and higher education more generally. By recognizing the broader impact of this work, colleges and universities, along with the organizations that support them, may be able to take concrete steps toward a stronger, more resilient future even in the midst of the extraordinary challenges of the present.

The FCC’s order requiring the ABC affiliates to renew their licenses early is the latest and most flagrant escalation of President Trump and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s campaign against broadcasters based on constitutionally protected speech. It is the first time in more than 50 years that the FCC has demanded early renewal and the first time it has done so across a network’s entire suite of owned-and-operated stations.

This action, taken in clear retaliation for Disney’s refusal to take Jimmy Kimmel off the air after public demands from the president and first lady, is a textbook case of unconstitutional jawboning—an act of government pressure directed at an intermediary to censor or distort the constitutionally protected speech of a third party. As the Institute and its partners argue in the comment, the Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear that government officials are not permitted to violate the First Amendment indirectly by means of coercive actions any more than they are permitted to violate it directly.

The Knight Institute has been at the forefront of efforts to raise awareness about and address the problem of government interference with social media platforms. In December 2023, the Institute filed an amicus brief in Murthy v. Missouri urging the Supreme Court to clarify the First Amendment limits on government efforts to pressure speech intermediaries. In June, the Institute endorsed the bipartisan JAWBONE Act, led by Sens. Cruz and Wyden, which would create new safeguards against the kind of government coercion at issue in the FCC’s treatment of Disney.

See the full comment here.

“The First Amendment does not allow the government to use immigration law to punish people for their political views,” said Xiangnong (George) Wang, staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “Students and faculty should not have to censor themselves out of fear that simply speaking their minds will lead to arrest or deportation. The First Circuit should uphold the district court’s ruling and ensure that this unconstitutional policy cannot continue.”

The lawsuit was filed in March 2025 on behalf of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA).

The appeal follows a nine-day trial in July 2025 in which the district court found that the Trump administration had adopted a policy of targeting noncitizens for their pro-Palestinian advocacy in order to suppress protected expression. The court held that the policy violated the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act and vacated the policy but declined to issue the injunction sought by the plaintiffs.

Today’s brief argues that stronger relief is necessary because the administration continues to deny that the policy exists while maintaining that it may use the very same immigration authorities that underpin the policy to carry on targeting noncitizens for their protected political speech. The brief asks the appeals court to ensure that the government cannot continue this unconstitutional conduct.

Read today’s brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit here.

Read more about the case, American Association of University Professors v. Rubio, here.

In addition to the AAUP and MESA, plaintiffs include AAUP chapters at Harvard, Rutgers, and NYU. The associations’ members include tens of thousands of faculty and students across the country.

Lawyers on the case include Ramya Krishnan, Jameel Jaffer, Alex Abdo, Scott Wilkens, Carrie DeCell, Xiangnong (George) Wang, Stephany Kim, and Raya Koreh of the Knight First Amendment Institute; Ahilan Arulanantham; Michael Tremonte, Noam Biale, Alexandra Conlon, and Courtney Gans of Sher Tremonte LLP; and Edwina Clarke and David Zimmer for Zimmer, Citron & Clarke.

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, lorraine.kenny@knightcolumbia.org

The following can be attributed to Jake Karr, staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University:

“Whatever you think of Perplexity or AI, this is a win for user control and for the independent journalism and research that help the public understand how online platforms shape public discourse. Computer crime laws like the CFAA shouldn’t be stretched to penalize tools that automate a user’s access to their own information.”

Read today’s decision here.

Read the Knight Institute’s amicus brief here.

Read more about the case here.

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, lorraine.kenny@knightcolumbia.org